According to People’s Online Daily, the new e-bookstore bears a striking resemblance to Apple Inc.’s (NASDAQ: AAPL) iBookstore. Like its US counterpart China Mobile’s e-bookstore will provide users with a simple means of wirelessly downloading online publications such as e-books, comics and magazines.

While the iPad and the Kindle by Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) have been the primary drivers of interest in e-books and paid online content distribution in the US, the Chinese market has Read the rest of this entry »

The string of tragic suicides at the Chinese manufacturing facilities of Taiwan’s Foxconn Technology Group (PINK: FXCNY | (part of Hon Hai Precision Industry Co. Ltd.) TPE: 2317) continues. At 10:50pm on May 14, Mr. Liang, a 21 year old male employee from Anhui province, jumped from the 7th floor of Fuhua dormitory, in Foxconn’s Shenzhen Longhua production base (news link in Chinese here).

There was some initial speculation over the cause of the death, as police found a knife at the scene and 4 knife wounds on the victim. Shenzhen police has announced that they have ruled out foul play, and sees the knife wounds as self mutilation prior to suicide. However the victim’s relatives understandably have some doubts over the death, and have told reporters they will push the police to investigate further.

COMMENTARY:
I find this string of deaths shocking and tragic, and if anything, they should serve as a prime example of the deep social issues underneath China’s rise. A detailed discussion of the various factors that caused this tragedy is outside the scope of this blog; however I would like to briefly share some thoughts.

Earlier this week China Daily, the leading English-language source for Chinese news, reported on the latest tie up between e-commerce partners in other Asian markets. Consumer-to-consumer (C2C) shopping website, Taobao (owned by privately held Alibaba Group), and Japan’s number one content and e-commerce portal, Yahoo Japan Corporation (TYO: 4689), have agreed to enable their participating businesses to sell in the other’s markets. Basically each company will add a section on its website developed to handle traffic from the other country’s users. Both platform additions are planned to launch on June 1.

According to Masayoshi Son, chairman of Yahoo Japan, the partnership will combine their users — over 260 million of them – and allow small Chinese and Japanese to engage in cross-border sales transactions. The chairman clearly has eBay Inc. (NASDAQ: EBAY) in his sites as he expects that this cooperation between his firm and Taobao will help make it the largest online shopping marketplace in the world.

“When we join hands, we will be able to beat eBay and be the largest online shopping marketplace.”
– Masayoshi Son, Chairman, Yahoo Japan and President and CEO, Softbank Corp. (TYO: 9984)

This deal between the two companies is beneficial to both companies but Japanese vendors currently on Yahoo Japan will be able to offer their 8 million product listings to over 170 million Read the rest of this entry »

In continuing positive news for shareholders of Baidu, Inc. ((ADR) NASDAQ: BIDU), the company declared a 10:1 stock split of its American Depository Shares beginning on the morning of Wednesday’s trading. The company’s shares on the NASDAQ closed on Tuesday Yahoo! FinanceQuote for BIDU/night at US$714.17 and opened the following morning, post-split, at US$74.20, an initial jump of close to 4%. By the end of the day the shares had closed at US$78.21 for a one-day increase of 9.5%.

Most analysts agree that the split coupled with the tremendously positive Q1 earnings announced just a few weeks ago has helped drive the company’s price to record highs. According to Reuters here’s a quick list of what’s helping to drive the strong interest in Baidu:

Share Price: The 10:1 split has helped open the market to a new category of investor who feels more comfortable purchasing several shares of a US$78 stock then buying even one share of a US$700+ stock. The influx of new classes of investors helped drive the price up.

Earnings: As mentioned above — and in our post from a week ago — the company’s Q1 earnings release declared Year-on-Year increases in revenues, operating income and net income of 59.6%, 167.4% and 165.3% respectively.

Google: Already the market leader, Baidu increased its share of the Chinese search market to 64% — up from 58.4% in Q4 2009. The semi-exit of Google from China as a result of its defiance of the government’s requirement that some search results be censored was a major contributor to Baidu’s increased market share. Google’s market share fell to 31% from 35.6%. (Market shares from Analysys International.)

Analyst Ratings: Baidu is covered by 22 analysts. Of them, 15 rate the stock a Strong Buy or Buy, 6 rate it a Hold and 1 rates it an Underperform.

Barely three days after our last report on the chain of deaths at major OEM Foxconn Technology Group (PINK: FXCNY | (part of Hon Hai Precision Industry Co. Ltd.) TPE: 2317), another employee has committed a suicide jump, making it jump number 8 at Foxconn’s Shenzhen base this year.

As Chinese website HC360 reports (link in Chinese), on the night of May 11, a female Foxconn employee Ms. Zhu, aged 24, jumped from the top of the eight-story residential building she lived in. While the reporters could not get immediate verification from Foxconn regarding Ms. Zhu’s employment status, they were able to confirm from Shenzhen police that Ms. Zhu was a Foxconn employee. She had not been to work in the past few days, and had stayed at home, possibly due to feeling low. The police is still investigating her death.

The irony is that only a day before, Foxconn had invited 3 buddhist monks from Mount Wutai (Shanxi Province, China) to perform a ritual at their production base in Shenzhen. As Qingdaonews reports (link in Chinese), Foxconn chairman Terry Gou had first proposed such an idea after the string of deaths in April, though senior management rejected the proposal due to PR concerns. As one insider commented, “we are concerned people would say, ‘instead of reviewing management practices, Foxconn decided to use monks to dissolve the incident.’”

However, after the death of employee Lu Xin on May 6, Mr. Gou again brought up the proposal, and this time it was executed. Vice President He Youcheng was reportedly tasked with inviting Read the rest of this entry »